it says it was founded in 1980 by Robinson, his wife Laurelee, Martin D. Kamen, and, later, R. Bruce Merrifield. Kamen and Merrifield, although dead, are both listed as OISM faculty members. Robinson has real scientific credentials; he has a Ph.D. in chemistry from California Institute of Technology and he was an associate of Linus Pauling’s until the two had a falling out over vitamin C. In addition to its scientific work on proteins, OISM is also involved in developing home-schooling techniques and “emergency preparedness.”

Robinson is closely linked with the “Petition Project,” an effort begun in 1998 to collect the signatures of scientists who doubt the reality of human-induced climate change. Robinson’s JAPS paper, “Environmental Effects of Increased Carbon Dioxide” is a long, tendentious rehash of just about every already-rebutted argument made against human-induced climate change.

Anyhow, wudnt u no it, the wingnuts sprouted on the June 23 letters to the editor page led by Arthur and Noah Robinson writing from the perhaps aptly named Cave Junction Ore. In full harumphing regalia they denounced being denounced

Evidentiary Science

In “Defending Science,” Editor Rudy Baum delivers an ad hominem critique of us and our colleagues, the institution at which we work, and the journal in which we published the review article “Environmental Effects of Increased Atomspheric Carbon Dioxide” (C&EN, June 9, page 5).
Baum neglects to mention several points. Authors Arthur Robinson and Noah Robinson, both educated at California Institute of Technolgy, were the subjects of two complimentary articles in C&EN (April 16, 2007, and Feb. 17, 2003). Both articles include photographs of us conducting research work at the Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine, which Baum now refers to as a “curious little entity.”
Second, although he denigrates our article, he does not mention even one item of the data, text, references, conclusions, or other substantive matters in the article to which he objects.
Third, he conceals the central issue. It is highly unusual for a research paper to be editorially maligned. His editorial appears in C&EN just three weeks after the announcement of the results of the Petition Project at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. For details see www.petitionproject.org. Our review article, used in the project, was published nine months earlier.
More than 31,000 Americans with formal degrees in science, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s—many of whom are members of ACS and readers of C&EN—have signed a petition that reads as follows: “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan, in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
If the editor of C&EN objects to our article, he should discuss the contents of the article. If he objects to our petition, he should take that up with the many thousands of his own readers who have signed it.Arthur B. RobinsonNoah E. RobinsonCave Junction, Ore.

Why thank you Art, the paper is now open for discussion. As a start, Art and Noah can go to the Real Climate Wiki to find a few of their errors and, of course, there is the discussion of the Oregon Institute of Science and Malarky. They discuss the slight of hand in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. Eli will look at Fig. 3. There are lots of apples and oranges here as well as stuff well past its sell by date. The bottom of the graph shows hydrocarbon use, not the increase in greenhouse gases, or even better in greenhouse gas forcings. Solar activity (?) is much more strongly smoothed than the Arctic Air temperature. Why dear bunnies, perhaps, because as Tamino has shown, temperature does not follow the 11 year solar cycle which is pretty strong evidence that solar forcing is not as strong an influence as greenhouse gas forcing. Further, estimates of the change in solar irradiance during the past few hundred years have decreased significantly as can be seen in the graph below from Skeptical Science but not in the latest from Robinson lavs. Skeptical Science has a long list of studies demonstrating that it ain;t the sun that is raising global temperatures

Eli also observe that the global temperature increases strongly in the last 25 years but that is not so much the case in the OISM manuscript. Of course, you say, they are looking at ARCTIC temperature, not global temperature. Fair enough, where can we find a record of ARCTIC temperature, why in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Seems to be a lot higher in 2000 than in 1940, which is not the case for Robinson and Soons .

Finally Eli and the bunnies extend their thanks to Rudy Baum, for printing a very special cover this week.

"total solar irradiance as measured by sunspot cycle amplitude, sunspot cycle length, solar equatorial rotation rate, fraction of penumbrial spots, and decay rate of the 11-year sunspot cycle" which can be abbreviated to "we made it up."

One of my local denialists was waving this Robinson et al. paper around and loudly proclaiming it to be ironclad proof that global warming is a hoax. I spent a couple weekends pulling up the primary literature that Robinson et al. refers to and then picking their paper apart paragraph by paragraph. I made it through about the first 4 pages before I just couldn't take it any more. If anyone's interested, my point-by-point "analysis" is here:

When it comes to data analysis skills, Lucia (a mechanical engineer) seems to be a legend in her own mind, at the same time accusing Tamino (a mathematician and expert time series analyst) of cherry picking and the like.

But after James Annan explained what was wrong with Roger Pielke's logic (multiple times, here and here), even Roger has now backtracked on his original claim that the IPCC projections have been "falsified" by the data of the last 7 years -- a claim that originated from the "Legend."

Fairly typical of what happens when people weigh in on things outside their area of expertise about which they have only the most rudimentary understanding.

Since when is it "ad hominem" to point out that a person is a mechanical engineer?

Or ad hominem" to point out that they are "weighing in on things outside their area of expertise about which they have only the most rudimentary understanding", which becomes clear after one reads Real Climate's and James Annan's explanations for why a 7 year time period can not be used to "falsify" the IPCC projections?

And the "Legend in her own mind comment" was intended as an observation about someone who clearly has a very high opinion of her own analysis skills (warranted or not).

Malarkey Mouse needs to write NCDC and share his Galileo-like knowledge with them, as their data disagree* with some blogger's opinion (but when has that ever stood in the way of denialism?).

It is up to YOU, Malarkey, to educate the world that some blogger has more expertise than the experts.

If you need help with your spelling and grammar in the letter, let me know. And let us know when NCDC does a press release for their capitulation to some blog.

----------

Again, for the slow-witted:

Ad hominem: your argument is wrong because you are an idiot.

NOTad hominem: your argument is wrong because of A, B, and C, and by the way, you are an idiot.

----------

Best,

D

* Based on preliminary data, the globally-averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the eighth warmest on record for May, the seventh warmest for boreal spring (March-May), and the January-May year-to-date period ranked twelfth warmest.

MarkeyMouse, are you still seeing hammer-and-sickle patterns everywhere?

I already told you, you should just go see a doctor. It'll help banish that Eternal War Between (Reaganite) Good and (Soviet) Evil -- and the "perpetual KGB rule" stuff -- that's still raging on inside the microcosm of your heat-oppressed brain.

It is clear that you (and Lucia) have difficulty distinguishing between the short and long term.

This confusion is the basis for Lucia's empty claims that she has "Falsified IPCC projections at the 95% level".

The weather "noise" (from El Nino, La nina etc) over a short term period like the last 7 or 8 years simply overwhelms the temperature trend due to greenhouse gases. So what you see when you take a "trend" is mostly due to such weather noise. And yes, it may even turn out to be negative. But does that mean anything when it comes to climate? No.

If climate science experts like Gavin Schmidt and James Annan can not convince those who claim that 8 year trends are meaningful in this case, there is certainly nothing I can do. At a certain point, it becomes a waste of time. Some people actually seem to enjoy the experience of being lost at sea.

But as Dano points out above, as far as science is concerned, what one writes on a blog amounts to little more than spitting in the wind unless on actually makes the effort to write it up and get it published in a peer reviewed scientific journal.

None of the scientists is even going to take seriously claims like "IPCC falsified" until they appear in a coherent form in a peer reviewed journal.

You and others may not like that, Malarkey, but, as Bruce Hornsby sang, "that's just the way it is. Some things will never change."

Schmidt and Ramsdorf are a pair of idiots who still defend the Hockey Stick. They don't permit free and fair discussion on their website, they are in fact appologists and defenders of fake science, and in general are a disgrace to their speciality. I wouldn't trust them to give the correct time of day.

Again I urge you to take this up with Lucia. She is completely able to receive fair criticism, unlike the Climate Criminals fron RealDimwit.

"Some people actually seem to enjoy the experience of being lost at sea."

MarkeyMouse still literally believes that there's a phantom Soviet empire out there engaging in an Eternal War Against Freedom. Seriously, what can I say to this sort of paranoia? It's as if he enjoys being afraid.

He'll just have to one day decide to stop being scared of this dumb crap and move on.

Rahmstorf:"After studying physics at the Universities of Ulm and Konstanz and physical oceanography at the University of Wales (Bangor) Stefan Rahmstorf completed a thesis on general relativity theory. He then moved to New Zealand and obtained his PhD in oceanography at Victoria University of Wellington in 1990."

Schmidt:"He received a BA (Hons) in Mathematics from Oxford University, a PhD in Applied Mathematics from University College London and was a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research. He serves on the CLIVAR/PAGES Intersection and the Earth System Modeling Framework Advisory Panels and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Climate. He was cited by Scientific American as one of the 50 Research Leaders of 2004, and has worked on Education and Outreach with the American Museum of Natural History, the College de France and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has over 50 peer-reviewed publications."

Wow, if these guys are "idiots," what does that make you, Malarkey? A sea urchin?

What is most absurd of all about the claims of "no warming since 2000" is that some of the people making them are actually tracking how/if each new month of temperature data changes their calculated trend.

This actually demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that they do not appreciate the difference between what happens over the short term and the long term trend (ie, the difference between weather and climate)

The underlying assumption seems to be that with each additional month's data they are going to be able to somehow recognize a change (or perhaps no change) in the long term trend.

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.